Ezra Klein's Menagerie of Decent Conservatives

He names five:

Ezra Klein Archive | The American Prospect:

• Megan McArdle.... I read Megan long before she moved to DC, and in fact, long before I knew her real name, or had ever met her.... I read, and link, to her because she's the writer on the right who's engaged in the project most similar to mine: Namely, trying to seriously examine social and economic policy. But... she's also my inverse. Where my project is trying to figure out social policy from the premise that the economic system is stacked against the not-so-powerful, her premise -- and target -- seems to be that the political culture is stacked against the interests of the rich and economically dynamic.... [S]he comes to some bizarre -- and occasionally cruel -- conclusions, but she also gets in a lot of worthwhile insights, and asks a lot of questions that I find useful. So if what you're interested in is a right wing version of me -- which is to say, a social policy writer who comes to the opposite conclusions and starts from the opposite premises -- she's your girl.

• Ramesh Ponnuru: I find it exhausting to wade through The Corner, but Ponnuru is an interesting thinker with takes policy research very seriously. His article on the conservative approach to health care is about the best I've read on the subject. If I could get a feed of just his blog posts, he'd probably be atop my list.

• Ross Douthat: Great writer, deep thinker. For better or for worse, Ross is among the conservative writers most palatable to liberal readers, probably in part because he's often writing in contraposition to the Republican establishment.... [R]eading Ross will tends to give you insight into how the Republican party is experienced by its more thoughtful members....

• The American Scene: A totally unclassifiable group of political thinkers assembled by Reihan Salam, who's possibly the world's least classifiable individual, period. Includes Peter Suderman, who's one of my favorite cultural writers, and James Poulos, whose stuff I enjoy quite a bit.

• David Weigel: Weigel's one of Reason's guys... loves politics, is obsessed with the horserace, and hates both parties. It's like reading a sports blog by someone who loathes all the teams but can't tear himself away from the joy and spectacle of the competition.

Four of these are, IMHO, OK. But I really have to dissent from the recommendation of Ponnuru. I can't understand what Ezra Klein is thinking.

When I think of Ramesh Ponnuru, I think of someone who is "mystified" at being accused of offering "bad math" in his comments on Bush's Social Security plan:

Ramesh Ponnuru: My post criticized Jacob Weisberg for claiming that President Bush had been unwilling to cut Social Security benefits and had instead balanced the books on his reform plan by invoking high stock-market returns. That wasn't true. Bush proposed cuts in future benefits...

Alas, Bush never "balanced the books" on his Social Security reform plan. Never. Jason Furman--the only person ever to go public with any estimates of the budget impact of the Bush plan, such as it was (certainly no Bush appointees ever had any numbers to talk about), calculated that it closed "only 24 percent of the 75-year [estimated Social Security funding] gap..."

When I think of Ramesh Ponnuru, I think of the guy who flamed Rod Dreher for being concerned about the interaction of industrial air pollution with his kid's asthma.

And, of course, when I think of Ramesh Ponnuru I think of the guy who fled in terror from the subtitle and dust jacket of his own book:

Ramesh Ponnuru: The Corner on National Review Online: A QUIBBLE byRamesh Ponnuru: Garance Franke-Ruta mentions my forthcoming book The Party of Death[: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life], which she describes as a "book on Democrats." The book does have quite a bit to say about the Democrats, and it's tough on them. But the book is about more than that, and the title isn't meant as a pejorative term for the Democrats. I explain, mostly in the introduction, what I mean and don't mean by the phrase. I'm not saying this to complain about Franke-Ruta. It was nice of her to mention the book, and her assumption was an easy one to make, partly because the Amazon page on the book is a bit misleading. (I've tried to get Amazon to change it a few times.)

But what Ponnuru was "complaining" about did not come from Amazon but from Ponnuru's own publisher, Regnery. Here was the inside flap of his book:

Is the Democratic Party the "Party of Death"?

If you look at their agenda they are.

IT’S NOT JUST abortion-on-demand. It’s euthanasia, embryo destruction, even infanticide—-and a potentially deadly concern with "the quality of life" of disabled people. If you think these issues don’t concern you—guess again. The Party of Death could be roaring into the White House, as National Review senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru shows, in the person of Hillary Rodham Clinton.... Ponnuru details how left-wing radicals, using abortion as their lever, took over the Democratic Party-—and how they have used their power to corrupt our law and politics, abolish our fundamental right to life, and push the envelope in ever more dangerous directions.... Ponnuru’s shocking exposé shows just how extreme the Party of Death has become as they seek to destroy every inconvenient life, demand fealty to their radical agenda, and punish anyone who defies them. But he also shows how the tide is turning, how the Party of Death can be defeated...

There is a Ramesh Ponnuru who is a reasonable thinker. But there is also a Ramesh Ponnuru who will say anything to get in better with Republican office-holders. And there is a Ramesh Ponnuru who thinks his job is to feed the wingnuts. You cannot separate them. You shouldn't pretend that you can.

If Ramesh Ponnuru wants to pull an Andrew Sullivan--to perform a public apology and penance for his past sins against sanity--then Ezra Klein can add him to his menagerie of decent conservatives. But until then, no.

Comments

[wcw]

I don't know the others, but I have read enough of the McMegan to have penned at least a few screeds against those who read her. She's no villain, just another agitprop artist. No artist exists without an audience, and so for her existence, I blame the audience. You, notably.

Videlicet once again one of my better public rants (second only, I argue, to my Seinfeld-renders-urban-life-like-a-glue-factory-renders-a-horse moment): http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2007/08/dangerous-rathe.html

Ugh, the McMegan. It burns my eyes.

[Ken Houghton]

I personally cannot read Douthat without seeing the cherry-picking and the poor assumptions; I'd rather read DeLong if I want an old-line Republican conservative who is palatable to liberal readers. But that may just be me.

McMegan, otoh, is unforgivable, and if Ezra is accurate in describing her as "a right wing version of me"--and he may be--then I suspect he has just identified the two members of the Washington Press Consensus in 2020.

[Mike]

I forsee a great future for MM; she has all the ability to strain logic, ignore inconvenient facts, and make up convenient ones, and pander to the wealthy and powerful she needs to rise to the top.

She left my version of the human race a long time ago. I don't expect her back.

[kharris]

This is the same MM who was promiently displayed on this web site claiming that being wrong (about Iraq) makes one a better go-to pundit, relative to those who were right? Whose logic in making this claim was that all those people who were right are self-aggrandizing, lime-light stealing (stealing from MM, I guess) slime who aren't worth the time of day? That MM?

[m]

Megan McArdle not only claimed being wrong about Iraq was a result of virtue and intelligence, she also wanted to beat anti-war protestors with a 2x4.

I can't understand what Brad DeLong is thinking, will he explain?

[matt Lister]

Much, much better than any of these is Steven Bainbridge. He actually knows something, unlike these folks, he's more honest than any of them, and he's also funny. I quite regularly disagree with his political positions and think he's sometimes quite wrong on his characterizations but he's always worth reading, something I cannot say at all about any of this group.

[sglover]

Just off the top of my head, Daniel Larison, Andrew Bacevich, and the guy who runs the "Cunning Realist" blog are far more astute and interesting than any of the clowns Klein writes about.

The title of this post should have been, "Why oh why can't we have a better Atlantic magazine-centered clique?".

[Elf M. Sternberg]

Derbyshire's takedown of Ponnuru ("A Frigid and Pitiless Dogma", http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=3190&sec_id=3190) is one of my favorites. I have no idea what Klein thinks makes up a "decent" conservative, but Ponnuru ain't it. The man long ago slid into fruitcake land.

[ArC]

Just what bar of logic or deceit would McArdle have to sink beneath to NOT be considered a 'decent conservative'?

(and what's the ambient pressure like down there?)

[cynical again]

Megan has been way too glib about the war. Brad (and others) who took her to task for her "But you should listen more to the folks who fuck things up!" post were right to do so. Writing shit like that should make you an object of derision, and I see nothing surprising about the fact that many on the intertubes aim to give her what she deserves.

In short: she's sharp, but I'm not convinced she's not some sort of moral leper.